​US Supreme Court: FISA surveillance stays secret

Defense attorneys for the Chicago teen arrested for terrorism in a 2012 sting will be not have access to government surveillance documents, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, upholding a lower court’s decision without comment.

Lawyers for Adel Daoud
requested access to the surveillance application that prosecutors
submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
court to show that the teenager was targeted by an
FBI-orchestrated sting because of computer searches related to a
term paper. Last January, US District Judge Sharon Johnson
Coleman ruled that for the first time such access ought to be
granted. After the 7th Circuit Court overturned the ruling,
Daoud’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court.

"Without access to FISA materials, it is virtually impossible
for defendants to challenge the lawfulness of the government's
surveillance of them," Daoud’s appeal said.

Daoud, a US citizen of Egyptian origin, was arrested in September
2012 during a FBI sting operation. According to the federal
prosecutors, he was contacted by undercover FBI agents posing as
terrorists in May that year, and discussed a plot to kill a large
number of Americans.

The government claims Daoud picked out the target – a popular
Chicago bar – while the undercover agents suggested and provided
the means of carrying out the attack. The 18-year-old was
arrested as he was allegedly pressing the button on a fake
detonator, intending to blow up the bar.

“The explosives that Daoud allegedly attempted to detonate
posed no threat to the public…They were inert and had been
supplied by undercover law enforcement personnel,” the US
Attorney’s Office in Northern District of Illinois said in a
statement following the arrest.

Daoud’s defense has
argued entrapment, alleging that the FBI targeted their client
due to internet searches involving Osama bin Laden related to a
high-school term paper. Defense lawyers in a number of other
terrorism cases have pointed out that undercover FBI agents not
only provided the means, but also incited the suspects to acts of
terrorism.

A Human Rights Watch
report from July 2014 criticized government agents targeting
“vulnerable individuals… including people with intellectual
and mental disabilities.” The report quotes Mona Daoud, who
described her son as “not the person with a complete
mind.” [PDF]

Since Congress created
the FISA in 1978, no defense attorney has ever been granted
access to its warrant applications.